Obama’s Interior has all the time in the world for wind and solar projects; oil and gas, not so much

posted at 3:31 pm on March 29, 2013 by Erika Johnsen

As keen as President Obama and the White House are to take credit for the fact that oil imports are down and domestic production is going strong, this isn’t due to any especial efforts on behalf of his administration as much as it is due to state and private endeavors — unfortunately, it’s all too clear that the administration has largely dithered and stalled on oil-and-gas permitting, at the opportunity costs of more robust job creation, economic growth, and possibly lower gas prices.

But green energy projects, as we’re all painfully aware by now, have been getting all kinds of devoted attention from the Obama administration, and while the Department of Interior just can’t seem to find the time expedite the oil and gas permits for which the private sector is clamoring, wind and solar ventures are the apple of their collective eye. Via Bloomberg:

Under outgoing Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, the administration has on average sold 1,000 fewer leases annually for drilling on public lands than Bush, according to data compiled by the Institute for Energy Research, a Washington-based organization.

Companies peddling green energy projects, on the other hand, are enjoying unprecedented access to the 248 million acres overseen by Interior’s Bureau of Land Management. In mid-March, Salazar greenlighted three massive, privately funded clean energy developments on federal properties.

A Duke Energy (DUK) subsidiary will erect 90 towering turbines on a wind farm about 60 miles southeast of Las Vegas, while McCoy Solar and EDF Renewable Energy will each build solar plants in the southern Mojave Desert of California, home to the sun-sanded vistas of Joshua Tree National Park. …

Smaller groups are still skeptical. They wonder why the administration is giving up hundreds of thousands of acres of untrammeled desert when its own Environmental Protection Agency in 2011 identified 80,000 to 250,000 abandoned mine sites on federal lands that would be suitable for large-scale solar and wind projects.

I don’t take umbrage with the Obama administration using the DOI’s authority to implement their agenda — I take umbrage with their agenda, which is largely about thwarting oil-and-gas companies and focusing their efforts on propping up what they’ve deemed to be green energy instead (not to mention practicing a gross double standard in their “prosecutorial discretion” of said energy, harrumph).

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Now that they have all the firearm related tragedies to exploit they are hoping the exploitation of the Deepwater Horizon tragedy has paid enough dividends no one will scream and holler about the billions wasted on solar and wind energy debacles.

Now that they have all the firearm related tragedies to exploit they are hoping the exploitation of the Deepwater Horizon tragedy has paid enough dividends no one will scream and holler about the billions wasted invested on solar and wind energy debacles.

we all know who leftists are…but I think it is always a good reminder to revisit their history. There are many of these ideas that reached maturity in the 60s…basically updating the Marxist critique to reflect the world as Marx could have never foreseen

from The Triple Revolution

In this changed framework the new planning institutions will operate at every level of government – local, regional and federal – and will be organized to elicit democratic participation in all their proceedings. These bodies will be the means for giving direction and content to the growing demand for improvement in all departments of public life. The planning institutions will show the way to turn the growing protest against ugly cities, polluted air and water, an inadequate educational system, disappearing recreational and material resources, low levels of medical care, and the haphazard economic development into an integrated effort to raise the level of general welfare.

….

A principal result of planning will be to step up investment in the public sector. Greater investment in this area is advocated because it is overdue, because the needs in this sector comprise a substantial part of the content of the general welfare, and because they can be readily afforded by an abundant society. Given the knowledge that we are now in a period of transition it would be deceptive, in our opinion, to present such activities as likely to produce full employment. The efficiencies of cybernation should be as much sought in the public as in the private sector, and a chief focus of planning would be one means of bringing this about. A central assumption of planning institutions would be the central assumption of this statement, that the nation is moving into a society in which production of goods and services is not the only or perhaps the chief means of distributing income.

this was a letter to LBJ signed by a whole bunch of noted leftists

Obama is just plodding along the trail. They have their blueprint and they are sticking to it.